Keen Guides. Accessible Culture and Museum Guides for the iPhone

Catharine McNally is founder and president of Keen Guides, a company that creates and sells downloadable tours for the smart phone filled with images, audio, video and text.

A museum lover who has been deaf since she was an infant, McNally hopes her company will make cultural outings a more enjoyable and accessible for everyone, including those who are deaf or hard of hearing.

We create, aggregate and distribute short-format audio and video tours for everyone to use, including in foreign languages and with accessibility modalities such as closed captioning, sign language and cued speech.

Visitors can download or stream the tours onto their personal media player, like the iPhone, or use a pre-loaded personal media player at participating cultural venues.

We create the content in-house or work with third parties like PBS television station affiliate WETA or DC By Foot, which develops free walking tours of the city. The content includes short-format video that is geo-coded by GPS location and tagged with categories like “good for kids” or “Civil War.”

We’ve contracted with Wake Forest and Gallaudet universities to develop campus tours for prospective students and other visitors. Once we get our application approved by Apple, we’ll be starting an iPhone Beta pilot in three cities with high tourism and local, arts-focused communities: Washington, Austin, and Winston-Salem.

Read the interview with Catherine McNally on abledbody:
An Accessible Museum Tour in Your Hand

"Keen Guides is rethinking tours. No more bulky backpacks and scheduled tour guides! With the Keen Guides mobile application you have the tour guide right there in your hand".